Stem Cell Failure May Explain Male Baldness

No, it’s not a headline from The Onion ("Potential Baldness Cure Leads Man To Reverse Position On Stem-Cell Research"), but researchers have found a stem cell failure may explain male baldness.

In the current Journal of Clinical Investigation, a team led by Luis Garza of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, reports that scalp "progenitor" cells that grow from hair follicle stem cells fail to proliferate on the heads of bald men.

Looking at scalp samples from 9 hair transplant patients, the team first determined they possessed plenty of adult stem cells, the unspecialized cells that give rise to replacement tissues in many organs, but that they were deficient in the "progenitor" cells (only.28% of scalp cells) that grow from the adult stem cells into hair, compared to 9 men with hair (where 2.3% of their scalp cells were hair progenitor cells).